The Cloister and the Hearth Part 82

"Who knows? may be in ten minutes you will be altogether as hot."

She ran into the shop, but speedily returned to the mayor and said, "Good news! He fancies her and more than a little. Now how is't to be?

Will you marry your child, or bury her, for there is no third way, sith shame and love they do rend her virgin heart to death."

The dignitary decided for the more cheerful rite, but not without a struggle; and, with its marks on his face, he accompanied Margaret to his daughter. But as men are seldom in a hurry to drink their wormwood, he stood silent. So Doctor Margaret said cheerfully, "Mistress, your lock is gone, I have sold it."

"And who was so mad as to buy such a thing?" inquired the young lady, scornfully.

"Oh, a black haired laddie wi' white teeth. They call him Ulrich."

The pale face reddened directly--brow and all.

"Says he, 'Oh, sweet mistress, give it me.' I had told them all whose 'twas. 'Nay,' said I, 'selling is my livelihood, not giving.' So he offered me this, he offered me that, but nought less would I take than his next quarter's wages."

"Cruel," murmured the girl, scarce audibly.

"Why, you are in one tale with your father. Says he to me when I told him, 'Oh, an he loves her hair so well, 'tis odd but he loves the rest of her. Well,' quoth he, "tis an honest lad, and a' shall have her, gien she will but leave her sulks and consent.' So, what say ye, mistress will you be married to Ulrich, or buried i' the kirkyard?"

"Father? father!"

"'Tis so, girl, speak thy mind."

"I--will--obey--my father--in all things," stammered the poor girl, trying hard to maintain the advantageous position in which Margaret had placed her. But nature, and the joy and surprise, were too strong even for a virgin's bashful cunning. She cast an eloquent look on them both, and sank at her father's knees, and begged his pardon, with many sobs for having doubted his tenderness.

He raised her in his arms, and took her, radiant through her tears with joy, and returning life, and filial love, to his breast; and the pair pa.s.sed a truly sacred moment, and the dignitary was as happy as he thought to be miserable: so hard is it for mortals to foresee. And they looked round for Margaret, but she had stolen away softly.

The young girl searched the house for her.

"Where is she hid? Where on earth is she?"

Where was she? why in her own house dressing meat for her two old children, and crying bitterly the while at the living picture of happiness she had just created.

"Well-a-day, the odds between her lot and mine; well-a-day!"

Next time she met the dignitary, he hemm'd and hawed, and remarked what a pity it was the law forbade him to pay her who had cured his daughter.

"However, when all is done, 'twas not art, 'twas but woman's wit."

"Nought but that, burgomaster," said Margaret, bitterly. "Pay the men of art for not curing her: all the guerdon I seek, that cured her, is this; go not and give your foul linen away from me by way of thanks."

"Why should I?" inquired he.

"Marry, because there be fools about ye will tell ye she that hath wit to cure dark diseases, cannot have wit to take dirt out o' rags; so pledge me your faith."

The dignitary promised pompously, and felt all the patron.

Something must be done to fill "to-morrow's box." She hawked her initial letters and her illuminated vellums all about the town. Printing had by this time dealt caligraphy in black and white a terrible blow in Holland and Germany. But some copies of the printed books were usually illuminated and lettered. The printers offered Margaret prices for work in these two kinds.

"I'll think on't," said she.

She took down her diurnal book, and calculated that the price of an hour's work on those arts would be about one fifth what she got for an hour at the tub and mangle. "I'll starve first," said she; "what, pay a craft and a mystery five times less than a handicraft!"

Martin, carrying the dry clothes-basket, got treated, and drunk. This time he babbled her whole story. The girls got hold of it and gibed her at the fountain.

All she had gone through was light to her, compared with the pins and bodkins her own s.e.x drove into her heart, whenever she came near the merry crew with her pitcher, and that was every day. Each s.e.x has its form of cruelty; man's is more brutal and terrible; but shallow women, that have neither read nor suffered, have an unmuscular barbarity of their own (where no feeling of s.e.x steps in to overpower it). This defect, intellectual perhaps rather than moral, has been mitigated in our day by books, especially by able works of fiction; for there are two roads to that highest effort of intelligence, Pity; Experience of sorrows, and Imagination, by which alone we realize the grief we never felt. In the fifteenth century girls with pitchers had but one; Experience; and at sixteen years of age or so, that road had scarce been trodden. These girls persisted that Margaret was deserted by her lover.

And to be deserted was a crime. [They had not been deserted yet.] Not a word against the Gerard they had created out of their own heads. For his imaginary crime they fell foul of the supposed victim. Sometimes they affronted her to her face. Oftener they talked at her backwards and forwards with a subtle skill, and a perseverence which, "oh, that they had bestowed on the arts," as poor Ague Cheek says.

Now Margaret was brave, and a coward; brave to battle difficulties and ill fortune; brave to shed her own blood for those she loved. Fort.i.tude she had. But she had no true fighting courage. She was a powerful young woman, rather tall, full, and symmetrical; yet had one of those slips of girls slapped her face, the poor fool's hands would have dropped powerless, or gone to her own eyes instead of her adversary's. Nor was she even a match for so many tongues; and, besides, what could she say?

She knew nothing of these girls, except that somehow they had found out her sorrows, and hated her; only she thought to herself they must be very happy, or they would not be so hard on her.

So she took their taunts in silence; and all her struggle was not to let them see their power to make her writhe within.

Here came in her fort.i.tude; and she received their blows with well-feigned, icy, hauteur. They slapped a statue.

But one day, when her spirits were weak, as happens at times to females in her condition, a dozen a.s.sailants followed suit so admirably, that her whole s.e.x seemed to the dispirited one to be against her, and she lost heart, and the tears began to run silently at each fresh stab.

On this their triumph knew no bounds, and they followed her half way home casting barbed speeches.

After that exposure of weakness the statue could be a.s.sumed no more. So then she would stand timidly aloof out of tongue-shot, till her young tyrants' pitchers were all filled, and they gone; and then creep up with hers. And one day she waited so long that the fount had ceased to flow.

So the next day she was obliged to face the phalanx, or her house go dry. She drew near slowly, but with the less tremor, that she saw a man at the well talking to them. He would distract their attention, and, besides, they would keep their foul tongues quiet if only to blind the male to their real character. This conjecture, though shrewd, was erroneous. They could not all flirt with that one man: so the outsiders indemnified themselves by talking at her the very moment she came up.

"Any news from foreign parts, Jacqueline?"

"None for me, Martha. My lad goes no farther from me than the town wall."

"I can't say as much," says a third.

"But if he goes t' Italy I have got another ready to take the fool's place."

"He'll not go thither, la.s.s. They go not so far till they are sick of us that bide in Holland."

Surprise, and indignation, and the presence of a man, gave Margaret a moment's fighting courage. "Oh, flout me not, and show your ill nature before the very soldier. In Heaven's name, what ill did I ever to ye; what harsh word cast back, for all you have flung on me, a desolate stranger in your cruel town, that ye flout me for my bereavement and my poor lad's most unwilling banishment? Hearts of flesh would surely pity us both, for that ye cast in my teeth these many days, ye brows of bra.s.s, ye bosoms of stone."

They stared at this novelty, resistance; and ere they could recover and make mincemeat of her, she put her pitcher quietly down, and threw her coa.r.s.e ap.r.o.n over her head, and stood there grieving, her short-lived spirit oozing fast. "Hallo!" cried the soldier, "why, what is your ill?"

She made no reply. But a little girl, who had long secretly hated the big ones, squeaked out, "They did flout her, they are aye flouting her: she may not come nigh the fountain for fear o' them, and 'tis a black shame."

"Who spoke to her? Not I for one."

"Nor I. I would not bemean myself so far."

The man laughed heartily at this display of dignity. "Come, wife," said he, "never lower thy flag to such light skirmishers as these. Hast a tongue i' thy head as well as they."

"Alack, good soldier, I was not bred to bandy foul terms."

"Well, but hast a better arm than these. Why not take 'em by twos across thy knee, and skelp 'em till they cry Meculpee?"